


A Soldiers Musings

by Siro



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Heres how polymechs can win, Multi, polyam bitches be yearning, this is a bunch of projection repackaged, this is not edited i impulse wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siro/pseuds/Siro
Summary: In the comfort of its partners embrace, the Toy Soldier muses on its feelings and relationships.
Relationships: The Mechanisms Ensemble & The Mechanisms Ensemble, The Mechanisms Ensemble/The Toy Soldier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	A Soldiers Musings

In a humming and whirring ship, the Toy Soldier allowed itself a moment of reminiscing, nestled between its partners, its _lovers_. The Toy Soldier didn’t often find itself in love, throughout its murder sprees, its wars, and its revolutions. It rarely found a lover, the sound of its voice a reminder of what it had done, and what it had once felt. And that only served to feed it’s duties as a soldier for a while.

  
But then it had found itself with the Mechanisms after singing songs unfamiliar to it (but somehow it acted and pretended it knew what lines it had. And suddenly it had). And it hadn’t been easy, early on. There were arguments, trials to solidify its level of personhood. It didn’t feel real, and never had, but it had taken a long time to warm up to the idea that others would treat it like it were real (hope and denial mixed together in its stomach for a long time, all pretend of course) but it found them including it in things it had never known before, slowly.

  
Baking with the pilot, drawing for the archivists library (“here you are miss Alexandria!” it had said, giving one of the pictures to the archivist “if you want you can just call me ivy” a red haired woman said, smiling at it, it pretended to be excited at that of course.), wood carving preciseness alongside many of the crew. Bitter precision and impatience from years of violence melding into calm, careful cutting.

  
It didn’t quite come to terms with its pretended feelings for a rather long time, not knowing whether the joy it pretended to feel when one of them smiled at it after a gift, or when they gave it one in return was one of a platonic or romantic inclination (Even now it struggled to say or think about it feeling love). But when it saw the crew, its crew. Together limbs tangling and going across each other, murmurs and light snoring could be heard when it entered.  
And it felt (pretending of course) that it was in love, realising that it would be happy to spend eternity with it’s crew. So it got a blanket for those that were asleep, putting it across Tim and Ashes. Tim had stirred and spoken to it, slurring words together offering for it to join them in the pile in between sleep. So it, for the first time allowed itself a reprieve from everything else that cycled through its mind so instead join the pile.

  
Careful to pretend to be extra comfortable, knowing otherwise its wooden form may have been off-putting to have lying on you with little given context. Surrounded by those that had stayed, it pretended to sleep for a long time. It held that memory tucked inside as a memory of its first realisations. The first time it received a kiss from Raphaella, the kiss as fluttery as her wings, it found itself pretending to feel a bubbly happiness.

  
Artificial arms bobbing up and down. Raphaella, Marius and the Soldier found themselves quickly bonding over interests, happiness to indulge one another, and feeling like imposters within the group sometimes. They often all found themselves experimenting on the other and helping at the lab, and the occasional psychoanalysis of a fruit.  
The Toy Soldier had been gently asked by a kind eyed Marius, its hand in his, if it would like him to talk about its past with it. At that the soldier had paused, pretending to decide. Before shaking its head, saying it was happy in the present, and that maybe sometimes it would allow itself to. Marius had nodded at that, Raphaella watching, before they both hugged it carefully. (Toy Soldier had also helped Marius acquire a great many medical qualifications off those he killed. However, most of them were somehow ruined at every possible moment to his dismay).

It had times where it didn’t, couldn’t understand how they all could love something that was not real. Where it felt that its partners had only indulged it out of curiosity, or pity for the wooden automaton. It didn’t know how its pretending to be happy would fail, those days, but the crew could tell. And would try to cheer it up subtly (it could tell, sometimes, other times they managed to be subtle about it.) Jonny inviting it to be shooting in hide and shoot as opposed to hiding, Tim offering to talk to it about it carving and designing decoration for some of his weapons, Brian quietly talking to it over tea about the definitions of real or not and so on. It knew what they were trying to do, and allowed their acts to reassure its pretended feelings. Reassurances in between quiet love songs and kisses.

  
There was so much that the crew had done together that it could think about. Or the knowledge of how it would not last forever. But it was content in the moment, safe and slowly healing from the many mental cracks, filling them in with a new type of gold (and not the kind it got from ashes). Maybe some day it would even be fully ready to talk to its lovers about the difficulty it had faced acknowledging its feelings. How even know it defined all its feelings as pretend. But that wasn’t a time for now, but for later. So slowly it allowed itself to pretend at sleep, knowing the signature gunshots from Jonny would let it know when to stop.


End file.
